


Camera Lucida

by LunaDeSangre



Series: However Improbable [4]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaDeSangre/pseuds/LunaDeSangre
Summary: House cares, underneath it all, and Chase's always suspected that—but now he's got the proof right here.





	Camera Lucida

**Author's Note:**

> (This damn title will probably only make any sort of sense to fellow Photographers/Art Philosophy nerds. Yergawd, brain, _why_ do you do this to me.)

It's not just Cameron's picture he keeps: while Foreman and her are distracted by the patient, he steals House's.

Foreman, the one who found it and brought it over for all of them to gawk at, doesn't care enough to notice (the novelty has worn off), and Cameron, who had looked like she very much wanted to do what Chase was already silently plotting the second he first saw it, believes him when he says he has _no idea where it went _and_ it probably just got lost somewhere, unless House went back for it to throw it away or burn it or something_. (She looks disappointed, but he's not sorry at all.)

It's strange (or perhaps just an omen of things to come), but he finds himself looking far more often at House's picture than Cameron's. He tells himself that's just because it's fascinating: House cares, underneath it all, and Chase's always suspected that—but now he's got the proof right here. (All his and hidden away from anyone else, like he's keeping House's secret for him...which is a thought he likes way too much.)

Later (much, much later), when Cameron leaves him, he thinks about ripping up her picture, throwing it away or burning it, because he's angry, disappointed and just _hurt_.

In the end he doesn't. Just quietly sneaks it into her suitcase when she's not looking. He's been left before, and he knows his lesson, even if he's foolishly let himself hope there, for a while, with her. There's no point in fighting the inevitable: she's not coming back—he knows it with the same kind of certainty he knew his mother was going to die as he watched her spiral down and down and _down_, helpless and useless.

Anger never helps, really. It's best to ignore it. Disappointment is a familiar, constant companion (his only one), and hurt, well, hurt is like happiness has turned out to be: ephemeral. It dulls, eventually. Like an old memory. There's no point in fighting.

So, ultimately, it's just House's picture he keeps. And he looks at it often, away from anyone else, at this secret that's his alone and that nobody knows he has. It's strange (or maybe not), but it helps. It helps so much that when he punches House's jaw, and House, like Chase's guessed, doesn't turn him in, Chase gets it a frame, and rebelliously makes a home for it on his bedside table, with only one little unhinged giggle fit at how mercilessly House would pick on him if he ever found out.

(The fact that he doesn't find that a deterrent probably says a lot about him. But at this point, he's tired, disillusioned, and he needs to know that someone cares, even if they don't necessarily care for _him_ precisely.)

It helps so much that when, very much later still, House (finally, maybe) looses his mind and his freedom, and Chase decides the only thing to do with his sudden unemployment is to loose _himself_ into the only parts of his country he's ever managed to truly consider home, House's picture is the only thing he takes with him.

But it's not just because it's his only thing of real value: he simply knows he'll find his way back, eventually, when House finds his way out.

(He's got faith.) 


End file.
